


The Leading Man

by deltaTea



Category: Final Fantasy XII
Genre: Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-09
Updated: 2014-07-09
Packaged: 2018-02-08 02:10:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1922772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deltaTea/pseuds/deltaTea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ffamran was an obedient child, but he could hardly be called a man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Leading Man

Ffamran was an obedient child.

How eager he was to please, ever his father’s favorite son. He got all the good marks. He kept to ‘acceptable’ company (mostly). His manners were impeccable. He followed his father’s every beck and call. Ffamran could do no wrong, where his younger brother could do no right.

How long it’s been, he thinks, since he’s heard the name at all, let alone heard anyone call him by it. Fran knew it, of course--she knew a great deal about the sky pirate, a great deal more than either of them would admit. But she had the courtesy to call him by his chosen name.

How long it had been, indeed, since he’d thought of the name, or the man it referred to. It had to be going on six years, now, since he’d seen Archades. Since Ffamran, the coward, had fled, and left Balthier in his place.

Ffamran was a weak man.

Ffamran wouldn’t have had the guts to do half the things Balthier had done. Ffamran wouldn’t have seen a fraction of the world that Balthier had explored, of the experiences he’d had. Ffamran wouldn’t know what to do with a man or a woman. Ffamran couldn’t find his way out of a scrape with the law if the officer was dangling the keys to the handcuffs just in front of his nose.

Ffamran was entirely too dependent. On his father. On his lover. Without them, he wouldn’t have known his head from his arse.

 _Ffamran is dead_ , he thought sternly, lacing up his boots. He was the leading man, Balthier, now. Ffamran was a long-lost prequel, an early chapter in a volume long since shut.

Even if he wanted to go back, even if he became so sick that some fever convinced him he _missed_  that hell, he couldn’t. He’d changed too much. If names were suits, then Ffamran was about a size too small; tight, confining, with a collar that would choke him nearly to death. Balthier, even after all this time, still felt a size too big; if you looked too closely, you could see the places where it hung off him, where he’d yet to grow into it. Perhaps some day it would fit him perfectly, like a second skin, but until then it was easy enough to pretend.


End file.
